


A Rumor in St. Petersburg

by templemarker



Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (2015)
Genre: Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-20
Updated: 2015-12-20
Packaged: 2018-05-07 20:57:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5470517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/templemarker/pseuds/templemarker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gaby moves her body automatically; she had taken great care to learn this choreography inside and out. It was only prudent, to better watch their targets, and yet the learning of it had been made so difficult, as Napoleon had frequently intervened to turn her jeté in to a partnered Grand jeté, to her protest and to the destruction of two of the apartment's lamps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Rumor in St. Petersburg

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pax](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pax/gifts).



> Happy holidays, Pax! This fic is set after the film.

Gaby was stretching in the warm room with the other girls when she finally caught it. 

Svetlana, the choreographer of their act in the forthcoming showcase, had been meeting regularly with Turko, the "producer" who seemed to be bankrolling the operation. It was regular enough that it did not appear to be unusual that Turko would be present at the studio on Thursday afternoons, casually stretched out on the chair behind the worktable in the corner. 

The one thing that man had going for him was that he only ever looked at the girls with professional interest. He saved his leering for Sasha, Svetlana's younger brother and assistant, and even then it seemed to be reciprocated. Gaby had easily recognized their exchanged looks. They were rather familiar. 

"All right, my beauties, we shall take it from the crescendo once more--you have all found your rhythm, but remember! You must be _sharp_ in your turns, as though you were the very edge of the knife Rodolfo wields! Find that edge, girls, and be it!" Svetlana says all in her beautiful, cultured French from the edge of the floor. Sasha stands beside her, waving for the music master to begin playing, and takes over calling out the beats and turns while Svetlana returns to sit next to Turko, dipping her head and speaking unheard over the thundering sounds of the piano and drums. 

Gaby moves her body automatically; she had taken great care to learn this choreography inside and out. It was only prudent, to better watch their targets, and yet the learning of it had been made so difficult, as Napoleon had frequently intervened to turn her jeté into a partnered Grand jeté, to her protest and to the destruction of two of the apartment's lamps. 

Illya's face was always schooled in disapproval, but Gaby caught the faint smile he couldn't repress. It made Napoleon's antics easier to forgive. 

With her choreography locked down, it is easy enough for Gaby to monitor the situation at the worktable. Svetlana's mouth is angled, making it difficult to read her lips (in Russian, no less) but Turko is facing forward, eyes seemingly directed to Sasha's derrière as he listens. He nods in appropriate places, and says a few recognizable things back: "going down tomorrow night" and "theater loading dock" and "кокаин" which meant that there would finally be something for them to do apart from sitting around playing cards, monitoring their planted bugs, and drinking ever so much red wine. 

The whole corps de ballet comes into their final shared saut de chat and fall in line, desperately controlling their heaving lungs, into a resting demi-plié with their arms raised fifth en haut. Gaby pushes air through her nose and uses everything she has to breathe slowly back in, until Sasha claps twice and the music ceases. All the _danseuses_ fall out of position, some falling to the floor, others running to the water station. They're all trained for this -- Gaby has especially trained for this -- but the routine is difficult and fast-paced. The girl Gaby replaced is in the hospital for exhaustion. 

That was the last run-through of the day, the premiere performance in one week, Gaby booked to stay by Waverly through the show's initial run for two weeks further while Illya and Napoleon will execute the mission. Once they have a sample of the cocaine and photographs of the operation, the two of them are set to return to London for leave while she sticks it out breaking her feet in half. Alone. She tries not to think about it. It was bound to happen; she had to run a mission alone at some point, and she was in the least suspicious role possible as long as she didn't take off as soon as the boys finish their work. 

She talks lightly to the other girls, who speak excitedly of the show or their auditions or their many and varied boyfriends awaiting them. Gaby's Russian has gotten significantly better since she first started learning it fixing automobiles for military and bureaucratic personnel passing through Berlin on their way to other areas of the Soviet Union. Though admittedly it was on the rougher side; she had deeply enjoyed the flush of red Illya would turn when she dropped "Hooy morzhovy" or "Otsosi, potom prosi" into her conversations. Napoleon had once fell off the bed laughing when she'd called Waverly "perdoon stary" and noted the extent to which penises featured strongly in Russian insults. Illya chose not to comment, instead returning to the side table, picking up the newspaper and pointedly opening it in front of his face. 

She gathered her things while watching Svetlana, Sasha, and Turko out of the corner of her eyes. Turko, again distracted by Sasha, who was neither encouraging nor discouraging his advances, muttered what looked like, "Da, da, Ya ponimaju," an acknowledgement that the drop would go smoothly. It was a late rehearsal that day, well into the evening, and it would give them the perfect opportunity to slip away while Sasha ran rehearsal to review the product and transfer it to Svetlana before turning it over at the premiere to her buyer. 

As the studio emptied out, Gaby wrapped her sweater around her to keep in her heat, with thick scarf and knit hat to keep her from shivering outside. It was fall, but fall in St. Petersburg after such exertion was bad enough. She followed Elise, nodding as she talked about the club her boyfriend was taking her to that night, and saw Illya idling their vehicle on the opposite kerb. She made her goodbyes and skipped over to him, thrusting her hands into the deep pockets of her sweater and nestling her sweaty face into the scarf.

"How did rehearsal go?" asked Illya. It was always a genuine question; he was interested in her work, and had helped as much as a man with very little dancing background could as she prepared in the six weeks before their deployment. 

"It was fine," she said back to him in Russian, just to see the pleased light on his face. "They finally discussed some actionable intel. I was nearly ready to proposition Sasha just to act as his ditzy but impressionable girl to get to watch Svetlana and Turko discuss business."

Gaby wanted to laugh at the crease that formed in Illya's brow. He was terribly transparent in his regard for Gaby, and equally as oblivious to Napoleon's great interest in him. It gave her and Napoleon something to gossip about when Illya made his runs around the city. They had generally agreed to keep from pursuing Illya until he could at least discuss his feelings without grimacing, but Gaby suspected it would be a long wait before he'd ever genuinely proposition her, no matter how provocative she was. That was even truer for Napoleon--they had begun a coded logbook of all the times they caught Illya looking at Napoleon with hunger and something else in his eyes. It took several sheets of accounting paper to catalogue them all, and that was just from the beginning prep work for this mission to date. 

In the car, she and Illya chatted amiably about the new intel and what the setup might be for intercepting their targets tomorrow evening. When he pulled into the garage of the building they were staying in, Gaby decided to play the provocateur once more. She took her hand out of her pocket, and pressed it to the skin of Illya's neck. 

He stilled. Gaby made a pleased noise. "You are so warm," she said. "Men are like furnaces. You should share your heat with a cold woman, warm her up. It would be chivalrous."

If anything Illya grew even more rigid. She didn't take her hand away, instead pulling her other out and resting it against the other side of his neck, letting out a contented sigh. She saw his eye tick and kept herself from smiling only by taking note of all the details of Illya's restraint to share with Napoleon later. Perhaps over enough red wine to kill her libido by making her pass out. It didn't take much, these days, with all the physical work she was doing. 

After a few minutes, she took her hands away, rubbing them together. "Thank you," she said, and Illya didn't move from his tense position in the driver's seat. She got out, grabbing her bag from the backseat, tapping her fingers on the driver's window until Illya looked at her. She made a motion for him to come along, and he took a deep breath and got out of the car. 

"I will take your bag," he said, rather than ask, and slipped it from her shoulder as they came to the stairs that led to the lobby and upwards. 

They were mostly silent, apart from the short intake of breath Illya would make every time she brushed against him on the stairs. 

It felt a little cruel, teasing him like this, but ultimately neither she nor Napoleon felt particularly guilty in touching him. The man was so clearly starved for it; as he had become used to their presence, he unbent enough to sway towards even the most platonic of touches, and Gaby and Napoleon had shared one of those wordless conversations across the room and made a gentleman's agreement to find excuses to do it constantly. 

Illya was slowly lowering his guard, and they were slowly earning his trust, showing him that it wouldn't be broken. That nearly instant trust that had sprung up between Gaby and Napoleon became the foundation for luring Illya into engaging with them. They didn't want him only for his body, of course, though that would be a very welcome addition to the furtive and semi-regular fantastic sex the two of them were having. They had both fallen sideways for _him_ , for the way he was, and the way he was around them. 

They lived under the threat of U.N.C.L.E. or their respective agencies folding their partnership, or splitting them up, or breaking whatever truce they had made to battle T.H.R.U.S.H. and its affiliates. All of them knew how tenuous their time together was, and how rare it was for people in their profession to not only work easily with a partner, but genuinely like and get along with one--let alone two. 

Thus the pushing, the provocation, the casual touches and displays of trust she and Napoleon made, over and over, until Illya would grow comfortable enough to trust them back, to touch them back, to enjoy fully the moments and missions they had. It would be something precious to remember in the future, when they went their separate ways and perhaps only encountered each other on opposing sides of this covert and seemingly endless war between the world's nuclear superpowers. 

In the small living room of the apartment Illya and Gaby shared under the pretense of brother and sister, Napoleon was stretched out on the ugly but comfortable couch, intently reading "Les Trois Mousquetaires" with a half-full tumbler of what was probably scotch resting precariously on his chest. 

"Hello dears," he said. "Welcome home. Dinner will be ready in an hour; Illya, I procured a loaf of that bread you like so much, even though it remains an entirely depressing colour. Gaby, I restocked the wine; twelve bottles of Château Léoville Poyferré, circa 1958. Our kind but exuberant wine merchant swears he has another case arriving from Bordeaux next month, but he said the same thing about our 1960 Château Ducru Beaucaillou, and look where we are now." He turned the page of his book. 

Illya grumbled something and went to the terrace, ostensibly to smoke, gently dropping Gaby's bag on the chaise longue and pulling out his cigarettes. Gaby took off her hat but left her scarf and perched on the back of Napoleon's couch. "He is getting more frustrated," she said. "Are you certain we shouldn't be more direct? In Germany, if a woman wanted a man, she would bring him a beer and tell him how his night would end."

Napoleon did her the courtesy of putting his book aside, taking a careful sip from his whiskey and managing not to spill anything on his cravat or shirt. "If we were in Germany, we'd probably be in detention centers with very little opportunity for privacy. Or touching," he said, but the rebuke was gentle and he offered her his tumbler. 

She drained half the whiskey, under Napoleon's smirky observation, and handing it back, wiping whiskey, sweat, and saliva from the corner of her mouth. She noted that Napoleon's gaze fell there, and not for the first time Gaby wished she could just pull Napoleon into the shower to kneel and Illya to stand behind. Shower sex was perfectly plausible, even with two large men, as long as everyone knew where to stand. 

"As you say," she said, disagreeing, and kissed her finger, touching it to one of Napoleon's, watching Illya stare moodily at the early evening sky over St. Petersburg. "If he is frustrated, he will get angry, and when he gets angry, he breaks things. You might enjoy it, but I have no desire to get broken."

"I believe his passions could be turned to a more...productive direction," Napoleon said, briefly clutching her fingers in his own and swiping a thumb along her knuckles. "But yes, I agree his frustration is nearing a tipping point. Perhaps after the drop, and your extraction, we could take a less nuanced approach."

She looked him in the eyes. "I'm holding you to that, Cowboy," she said, and Napoleon smiled with his face, not only his eyes. 

Napoleon made for the kitchen, where something lovely was in the oven. Illya finished his cigarette and began another with the embers of the first. Gaby kept her sigh internal, and moved towards the shower, dropping clothes along the way that she knew Illya would pick up after her. 

First securing the intelligence, then getting through this bloody ballet, and then meeting up for two weeks of leave in London. There was a house, in the Scottish highlands, that she had learned about from one of Waverly's other borrowed agents, a genial but exasperating fellow by the name of Bond. She had won a promise off him in a devastating game of cards, use of the house for some few weeks at the time of her choosing. 

Perhaps it was time to call that in, for their brief holiday. There they could truly be alone, together. It would be the direct method, whether Napoleon liked it or not, if this continued subtlety and slow burn didn't result in some response from Illya. 

Besides, Skyfall sounded rather romantic. A nice, quiet place with no one around. She'd ring Bond's answering service in the morning and set everything up. 

Pleased with her decision, she left her underwear hanging from the doorknob, and started the shower. She only wished she could see Illya's face when her trail of clothing ended.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The movements of Gaby's choreography are pulled from my teenaged ballet en pointe. To see live examples of any of these movements, just copy and paste the name into YouTube and they'll show you! New York's WNET Sunday Arts Profile has a [nice brief profile of contemporary ballet](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqIQGmnj1iU) if you are unfamiliar with the discipline. 
> 
> 2\. Ballet during the Cold War was a key element of propaganda, cultural wars, and politics during the Cold War. Russia had a very insular yet incredible company in the Bolshoi and Kirov ballet companies; one of the biggest scandals in ballet during this time was the defection of Rudolf Nureyev in 1961 to the United Kingdom. He is one of the great legends of ballet; it was quite a blow to international relations. Stéphanie Gonçalves [wrote a fascinating paper](http://www.academia.edu/8546559/_Dance_as_a_Weapon_Ballet_and_Propaganda_in_the_Cold_War_France-Great-Britain_1947-1968) on the subject of ballet and the Cold War. 
> 
> 3\. I hate to mix кириллица and Latin transliteration, but that's how my sources presented the information. 1) кокаин = cocaine; 2) Hooy morzhovy = walrus dick; 3) Otsosi, potom prosi = Blow my cock, then make a wish; 4) perdoon stary = old fart. I love Russian _so much_. 5) Da, da, Ya ponimaju = Yes, yes, I understand.
> 
> 4\. Les Trois Mousquetaires = The Three Musketeers, in original français
> 
> 5\. _[Château Léoville Poyferré](www.leoville-poyferre.fr/en/)_ dates from 1638; 1958 was not a particularly notable vintage, but the Poyferré is known for the delicate and smooth nature of its vin. [_Château Ducru Beaucaillou_](http://www.chateau-ducru-beaucaillou.com/) is a second-growth vinyard which originally dates from the 1200s. The 1960 is a particularly sought after vintage. Both château are 1855 classified vinyards, meaning they are two of the best Bordeaux in France.
> 
> 6\. All spies know each other. Just picture a young, roguish Sean Connery in a 1960s version of Skyfall. Dame Judy Dench is still M, though. Obviously.
> 
> 7\. "A Rumor in St. Petersburg" is the first song in 1997's classic Russian historical film "Anastasia." Sometimes for fun I like to imagine Gaby as Anastasia, Napoleon as Dimitri, and Illya as Vladimir. But they look like they do now, and it ends in a threesome.


End file.
